School uniforms and smiles on the last day of school.
"If my fifteen-year-old self saw these pictures, I think she would be astonished. She would be amazed at how she became a cool-looking person doing cool stuff" I said to Guitar Güero one day while I was going through the pictures of our spring trip to Gruyères. "It looks like your twenty-eight-year-old self is pretty impressed about it, as well" he replied. And it's true: I feel fortunate to have achieved many things that I had never imagined, accrued many unique and exhilarating experiences and visited places that I never thought I would get to see with my own eyes.
If it sounds like I'm boasting, then I'll let you in on a little secret: as it might have been reflected by the lack of updates here in Saturn Satori, the last six or seven weeks have been like a crazy roller coaster ride for me. A flurry of bad news and stressful situations generated lots of tension and anxiety that in the end resulted in me just losing the thread of my mental stability and motivation. Being in the middle of this bundle of worrying circumstances, I found myself looking back, and reminiscing of my old times as a kid and as a student, when it looked like life held infinite possibilities and was always seemingly waiting for an exciting and promising start.
During High school, I was pretty much what you would call a model student. I always had good grades (well, except in Math and Physics), was very obedient, dutiful and dedicated. I was always getting enrolled in contests and Knowledge Olympiads and things like that. These days I really cannot fathom being able to do what I did then: hours of after-school studying at the library, getting piles of homework done every day, and doing extra-studying sessions during down times and even holidays - all of it while still making some time for reading Gogol, Hesse, Huxley, Kundera, Kafka and many others. In short, I was pretty much a third-world version of Rory Gilmore from Gilmore Girls.
Such a good girl...
Unlike Rory, however, I was very physically active. Even though in High school we didn't have any sports class (it was considered a waste of time that would be better invested studying), I surely got plenty of exercise. I practiced Tae Kwon do four days a week, and was part of a dance team. Some days I would have both things in the same day so I would end up doing between 2 1/2 and 3 hours of exercise.
From my very first Tae Kwon do tournament (I'm the blue one, of course).
Dancing at a local event. I was sixteen!
A recurring advice I've heard is that, whenever you feel lost, you can look back at a time when you felt happy and in control of your life, analyze the traits and attitutes you possesed back then and use them to guide you. It's like doing a real-life restoring procedure of your mental software when the current system configuration has become unstable.
Looking at my teenage self, I wish I could regain the focus and discipline that I had back then, as well as that sense of duty – that attitude of "work first, then play" that I seemed to have mastered back then, and became diluted somehow in the following years.
However, not everything was all-around amazingness about teenage Violetta. If you look at me now, maybe you wouldn't guess it, but as a teenager I was incredibly insecure. I had a terrible fear of rejection and I felt hurt very easily. I was also very temperamental and passionate about my emotions and a bit of a drama queen. Nevertheless, I always had good friends and a group to hang out with, and while I was never popular in the sense that everybody liked me, admired me and wanted to be my friend, at least most of the other kids at school knew who I was.
I've always struggled with my Type A personality issues, but back then my anxiety levels used to go through the roof, and I used to worry about everything all the time. In fact, at some point I had to forcibly slow down my pace, since my wonder-woman, super-busy routine led me to develop a nasty case of gastritis that got so bad that one day I had to leave school early because my stomach hurt so much I could not even stand up straight or walk at a normal pace.
Another not-so-great aspect about being a teenager was that I grew in the heart of a traditional family, complete with the typical over-protective Mexican mother. I often felt like I was missing out on things, since I was not allowed to go out as often and as late as the other kids, and when I complained about how my younger brother had much more freedom than I did, being allowed much more permissions without so many restrictions, my mother surprised me with her reply: "well, he is a man and cannot get pregnant, or get his reputation ruined so easily". Enough said. Same with the clothes: since my mother was paying for them, everything I bought had to have my mother's seal of approval of being something a decent young lady would wear (no skinny or low cut jeans, no cleavage, no skirts above the knee and the most important for her: no crop tops), so my fashion choices were rather limited. Being lacking of a more rebelious attitude to channel my inner Laura Palmer, I just played along and put up with it until I started getting my own money (at eighteen) and moved out (at twenty-one).
Life is always a trade-off, isn't it? Now I have a lot of freedom to do as I please, but also the responsibilities of being an adult, and more often than I would like I end up doing stupid stuff that carries unwanted consequences, or just being careless and doing things that I later realize were definitely not in my best interest.
However, who says that, when it comes to ourselves we can't pick and choose? Taking a look at all those old pictures made me realize how much I have evolved and how much I have been through to become the person that I am now. Still, that doesn't mean that I cannot bring back the best traits of my younger self and incorporate them into this newer version of me. Now I can be enthusiastic and confident; I can be as creative and experimental with my image as I want while being disciplined and industrious on my work; I can cultivate myself and exercise my body, while being able to party, travel and accrue interesting experiences as I please.
Guitar Güero and I, at the beginning of our Berlin adventure together, more than two years ago!
It was a great victory to realize that this is the perfect moment to build the most amazing version of myself, ever. I have the building blocks, plenty of resources and golden years ahead, full with surprises. Why limit ourselves when we can use our life experience to create our dreamed version of ourselves? Being your all inspiration, that is all this is about.
Have you looked at your old self recently? Is there any traits that you would like to bring back or rescue?
Looking back is sometimes the way to help us leap forward.
Stay strong!
